


The Santabringer

by stabbyunicorn



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Christmas, Evil Santa Claus, Flying, Flying Sleigh, Gen, Santa hats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21947419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stabbyunicorn/pseuds/stabbyunicorn
Summary: Taylor triggered right after Thanksgiving break. Now it’s Christmas Eve, and Miss Militia is making Taylor spend the day with Sophia Freaking Hess. Obviously, this can only result in one thing: an Endbringer-level Evil Santa turning everyone into her loyal elves.
Kudos: 21





	The Santabringer

“Director? Director, can you hear me?”

I listened for several seconds, but all I heard from the radio was that damned song my mom used to sing. ‘He sees you when you’re sleeping’—totally not creepy. Thankfully, when five-year-old me shared her concerns, my Mom had the decency to switch to ‘O Holy Night.’ The radio was not so polite.

It shouldn’t be playing _music_ , anyway: it was for communication, not entertainment. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead or possessed, but this was all Miss Militia’s fault. _She_ decided it was a good idea for me to spend Christmas Eve cleaning the PRT archives with Sophia Fucking Hess. A ‘bonding experience,’ Miss Militia called it. A way to for us to ‘settle our differences.’

Well, Miss Militia, apparently _this_ is what you get: possessed by my mother’s Santa hat—I’ll want that back, by the way—because you touched one of the archive’s scrolls with your bare hands. You told _us_ to wear gloves, but I guess that was too much for _you._

Given the screams we heard on Miss Militia’s way out, I’m guessing a good number of people are now dead. My bugs have found strange lumps of _something_ that I _hope_ aren’t bodies, but—

“Let me see it!” Sophia demanded.

I tried to ignore her. It’s easiest when I ignore her—she doesn’t stop, but I can almost pretend I don’t care.

“Is it what I think it is?” she continued. “Is it a _list?_ Did _Santa_ make it? She did, didn’t she? And what do you think Miss Militia meant? Who’d be disappointed?”

She was far too gleeful for the death and destruction that had likely been set loose. Her Christmas obsession was possibly worse than even Mom’s had been, and Mom used to sing Christmas music all year around.

It was surreal seeing Sophia as jubilant as she’d been this past week, and she was even more jubilant now. According to the Director, Sophia’s mother had said that Sophia’s life had been saved by ‘Santa,’ a red-cloaked supervillain who’d apparently retired around a decade ago.

“Come on, let me see!” Sophia said.

Sophia was still standing there, arm outstretched. _Fine._ I sighed and handed the artifact over.

“Oh, Em, Gee, it _is_!” Sophia enthused. “Heh, the tag says ‘benign.’ It— hey! I am _not_ naughty!”

On the scroll was an endless list of names—it seemed to grow forever as you unwound it—starting with ours and continuing with hundreds more.

I snorted with as much vehemence as I could muster, and Sophia turned to me, affronted.

“I’m not!” she reiterated. “I _said_ I was sorry, anyway. Besides, I helped you a couple times—”

“Just because you’re trans, too.”

“Look, Taylor… We were just having fun.”

A year of making my life hell, culminating in a particularly gruesome life-altering experience the Monday after Thanksgiving break, and it was just—

“ _Having fun?_ ” I hissed. “You— My life was _hell_ thanks to—”

“Not anymore, though,” she pleaded. “You’re a _hero_ now.”

“It’s— it was two weeks ago!”

“Come on, it was at least three,” said Sophia. She looked up at the ceiling as she performed some mental math. “Closer to five, actually.”

“Fuck you.”

“Let’s get out of here, first,” she said. “Ugh, Christmas is supposed to be hot cocoa, Christmas trees, and Santa. Instead I’m locked in a room with someone who won’t even _try_ to get in the Christmas spirit, and—”

Great. She was ranting about ‘Christmas spirit’ again. Like she would know the Christmas spirit if it hit her in the face.

“ _Kindness,_ Sophia,” I said, with as much condescension as I could muster.

“Beg pardon?”

“The Christmas spirit is kindness,” I said. “The opposite of your whole… _thing._ ”

Sophia rolled her eyes.

“Like _you’re_ so kind,” she said. She began yammering away again, but I did my best to tune her out.

It wasn’t her greatest comeback: I never claimed to be kind, nor to have Christmas spirit, and neither did I care to. _Bah humbug_ , I suppose.

I looked to the archive’s doors, still closed, and presumably still just as locked as they’d been when the possessed Miss Militia had abandoned us here.

“Try your phase thing again,” I jabbed, interrupting Sophia’s ranting. Sophia answered me with a glare—the walls were lined with electric wire, and she couldn’t phase through. “What? _I’d_ have fun.”

With a huff Sophia grabbed something heavy from one of the shelves. It was vaguely gun-like, but—

“Even know what that’ll do?” I asked her.

“Hopefully it’ll do something big,” she said. She pointed it at the doors and pulled the trigger—

She flew backwards with a scream as a torrent of water shot from the gun. Artifacts flew off the shelves and into the flood, several tinker-made ones hissing and sparking menacingly. Why had the PRT moved the archive to Brockton Bay? I swear it must have been a Simurgh plot.

“Turn it off!” I shouted.

Sophia didn’t reply. She’d somehow found herself pinned to the ceiling, the gun still in her arms holding her aloft by its constant stream of water. Said water was beginning to pool around my feet. How was it already a half-inch deep? The room was massive. It shouldn’t be possible. If this kept up, we’d soon drown.

Then the idiot dropped the fucking gun. It flew across the room, slamming into a shelf. The shelf began to tilt—why didn’t they bolt the shelving down? Shouldn’t that be a regulation?—and then, it was falling.

I shook my head as row after row fell with clattering sounds. Device after device fell from them, several exploding as they hit the ground or were crushed, still more exploding in response to those explosions.

We were going to die, weren’t we? Of all the people to die with, why did it have to be Sophia Fucking Hess?

Where was she, anyway? Ah. She’d fallen from the ceiling. Judging by the upturned box of trinkets beside and surrounding her, she must have broken her fall on one of the shelves from the still-standing side of the room.

She’d sat up. I could almost laugh at the dazed expression on her face, but—

“Shit,” she said.

Okay, fine, I laughed. Hey, I was going to die; I might as well find what humor I could.

A breeze of cold night air shook me from my musings.

“Hey, it worked!” Sophia said.

The shrill blaring of alarms pierced the air. If I get hearing damage from this, Sophia _better_ get ‘Pan-Pan’—her ‘like, totally best friend aside from Emma’—to heal me.

“Come on!” Sophia yelled, racing off towards the breeze.

One of the archive’s walls had been blown. Jagged bits of concrete and rebar jutted out everywhere. Fuck. This was bad. The trouble we’d get into… I tried not to think about it.

The sky was eerily dark. Shouldn’t the streetlights be on? I could see a light working here and there, but Brockton Bay’s usual bright glow was eerily absent. The city was lit only by moonlight and the light of the brightly shining stars.

The street was some twenty stories below, and nearly empty. Where was everybody? Shouldn’t they be out shopping? It was Christmas tomorrow.

Faintly, I could hear a whispering song, slow and slightly off-key and with something wrong and twisted in its tone:

“We see you when you’re sleeping… We know when you’re awake…”

I felt a chill go down my spine. As if the song hadn’t been creepy enough already…

“There!” whispered Sophia. How could she see through the darkness outside? I couldn’t see anything—not with my eyes, at any rate.

I reached out with my bugs. There! A woman, hiding behind a dumpster between the two buildings across the street. She was shaking, her breath quivering. I felt her muscles begin to tense, and then she began to—

“She’s moving,” said Sophia, belatedly stating what I’d already felt. “Wait…”

I noticed it first with my eyes, then with my bugs: a figure dressed in green with a silly little hat. I could just see his serene, unnatural smile. An _elf._

He intercepted the scared woman. The song grew louder—

“We know when you’ve been bad or good…”

“Taylor…” Sophia said, her voice quiet. Was she afraid? Actually _afraid?_ “I think they’re going to—”

The elf held out something. One of my flies landed upon it. A rock, hard and rough, tasting almost of nothing and almost of dirt.

Was the woman begging? She was rapidly shaking her head side to side; she tried to back away, but her back hit the dumpster. What—

The elf threw the rock.

My bugs died in the whirlwind of a fire that wasn’t fire, immolated along with the woman upon which they were perched. _Coal,_ I realized. The rock had represented coal. But it was worse than coal; worse than burning. It was as if my bugs’ very essences were being stripped away, and as if with them, so to was my own.

I fell on my knees. I couldn’t hear, couldn’t think, couldn’t—

“Taylor? You okay?” Sophia asked.

I couldn’t muster a response.

“Taylor… It’s worse…” Sophia muttered.

Worse? What was worse than this?

Sophia was pointing. Reluctantly, my gaze followed.

A man was cornered in the nook of a closed shop’s door. He was banging on the glass, but it wouldn’t break. Behind him, an elf was holding aloft one of those silly elf hats, lowering it slowly towards the poor man’s head…

The song’s twisting, hypnotic melody continued.

“So be good for goodness sake.”

Hat touched head, and the man began to change. His clothing shifted: his jeans turned green, and his t-shirt morphed into a matching button-down shirt complete with red buttons. His terrified face was wiped away, replaced by that unnatural, serene smile, and though it was hard to tell, I was certain his cheeks took on a rosy red glow.

I glanced at Sophia. She was transfixed, her hand twitching.

“Fight _back,_ ” she muttered, so quiet I could barely make out the words. “Just fucking fight _back,_ idiot…”

I tried not to say anything, I did, but still—

“Never stopped you from going after me.”

Sophia pulled her gaze away from the elves below and onto me.

“You weren’t—” she started, but cut herself off.

Several seconds passed before I finally lost patience.

“Fuck this,” I muttered. I turned and began searching the room. It was full of exotic Tinker devices; there had to be something useful.

A jet-propelled skateboard that didn’t look like it could actually fly… A coil of some kind of rope that looked normal, but somehow felt as if it couldn’t be trusted… A— Wait, was that a machine entirely dedicated to hot cocoa?

“Cool!” exclaimed Sophia from beside me, because of course she did. I wandered off as she started messing with the machine. It began to hiss and gurgle.

“People are _dying_ , Hess,” I called over my shoulder. She didn’t answer.

The next row of shelves was placed unusually far from the last. As I reached it, I discovered what they’d had to make room for:

A sleigh.

I sighed. As soon as I saw it, I had to resign myself to the inevitable.

“Awesome!” Sophia exclaimed, rushing up to the sleigh while somehow managing not to spill either of her two mugs of hot cocoa.

She set the mugs down as she took her seat—apparently sleighs had cup holders—and began pressing buttons. Absolutely nothing happened. Sophia appeared crestfallen.

Resignedly, I sat down beside her. At once, the sleigh thrummed to life. I tried to ignore Sophia’s cheers as I fiddled with the reins—they were attached to absolutely nothing—and tried to make sense of the dashboard.

It seemed like all I should have to do was pull—

As soon as I pulled on the reins, the sleigh lifted into the air. Sophia was beside herself with glee, and I had half a mind to push her out the sleigh while I still could. Sadly, I managed to find some tiny bit of Christmas kindness, and refrained.

With a flick we were flying, up and over the shelves, around and about and then, finally, out the destroyed wall and into the night.

I remembered to turn only moments before we’d have crashed into the building across the street. Sophia screamed in delight like she was on a rollercoaster.

“Here, hot cocoa!” Sophia said, handing me a mug. How had it not spilled? Fucking Tinkers. I hate them all. Fucking broken powers.

Gingerly I transferred the reins to one hand. The sleigh didn’t seem to mind; it was as if it could read my intent as much as it could my actions. I sighed as I realized it probably could.

I lifted the hot cocoa to my mouth distrustfully—who knew why the hot cocoa machine was locked away in the archive?—but as soon as the mug was near my mouth and I smelled that familiar smell, I couldn’t resist taking a sip.

It was like taking a trip back in time; I could almost hear Mom singing to me; could almost feel her cuddled up beside me on the big armchair, her head against—

Sophia. The head against my shoulder was Sophia’s.

I shoved her away.

“Sorry,” she muttered. There was something in her voice, a resigned dejection combined with embarrassed apology—

“Fine,” I said, though I didn’t know why. Another bout of Christmas spirit, I suppose. A desire to be kind, even to my enemies. “Go on.”

Tentatively she let her head rest once more against my shoulder. I sighed a sigh full of irritation and wistful remembrance alike.

I pulled us higher into the air and surveyed the street below. There were elves everywhere, hundreds, maybe thousands, all holding lumps of coal that pulsated with red and green glows. They were all headed the same direction: towards the bay.

What was at the bay? I turned the sleigh to follow—

And then we heard it: a deafening, droning, terrifying siren. Sophia cursed.

“Can’t this thing go faster?” she demanded.

We were going pretty fast already; we’d reach the Boardwalk in less than a minute. Wait—

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a spot over the water, right by the Boardwalk. If I had my geography right, it’d be at the end of the pier.

There, something was glowing with that same red and green pulsating glow, swirling and twisting around itself, getting brighter and brighter with every moment. Leading up to it was the trail of—

“The elves!” Sophia exclaimed. “They’re feeding it coal.”

They tossed chunk after glowing chunk into the ball of swirling lights; with each piece it swirled faster and angrier, its glow blazing stronger and stronger until it was nearly blinding, and then, just as we reached the boardwalk and I started our descent—

A spiraling beam of red and green light shot into the sky.

Startled, I yanked back on the reins, slamming Sophia and I back into our seats. Now, as we hovered stationary only a couple dozen feet high with no wind roaring past our ears, I could once more hear the song beneath the air raid sirens’ din, slowly gaining volume by the word.

“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why…”

It reached its crescendo as the light seemed ready to ignite the sky. The entire city was lit like day—

“Santa Claus is coming…”

All at once the light collapsed into a small shape floating a hundred feet above us—

“…to town!”

It was a person, surrounded in a halo of red and green. Sophia gasped.

“Santa,” she whispered, nearly reverently.

A hail of rockets launched from behind us. I craned my neck and scanned the rooftops… Capes! Dozens of them, and Armsmaster had just fired a volley—

The rockets hit the hovering figure and detonated with an ear-splitting bang, but when the blasts had cleared, she was still hovering, unperturbed.

She flicked a finger, and from her aura extended several dozen bolts of brilliant green lightning, each striking one of Brockton’s defenders. Had she killed them? No: through the glare I could just see their transformation begin, armor and weapons shifting into green and red clothing.

“ _Endbringer_ Santa,” whispered Sophia. “She never did stuff like _this_ before…”

But though the figure was a woman, and though she wore a cloak of red, she _couldn’t_ be Santa. Her face was masked in shadow, but her shape, her stance, her _hair_ —it billowed out from beneath her cloak in long elegant curls—

I couldn’t help but recognize her. It should have been obvious—it _had_ been obvious, but I hadn’t wanted to see it. This was—

“Mom,” I whispered. It was impossible, it was wonderful, it was terrible, it was—

Sophia’s head spun to stare at me.

“ _Mom?_ ” she demanded. “Endbringer Santa is your _mom?_ ”

Unfortunately, Sophia had shouted. The woman— _Mom_ —had heard.

Within a second she was hovering inches from me, staring into me with eyes that glowed an unnatural red. I could hardly move.

“Taylor?” she whispered.

Numbly, I nodded. Her head tilted; I could feel her stare penetrating through my consciousness and—

“But you’ve grown so old… And naughty, too… Not _too_ naughty, though,” she said, softly, her voice filled with an ethereal grace that seemed to resonate in my bones. She grimaced. “Can’t say the same for your friend.”

“She’s not—” I started. But that wasn’t important; how— _how_ — “How are you here? How are you _alive?_ ”

She lowered her cloak’s red hood. Beneath, her head was covered by a Santa hat— _her_ Santa hat.

“My own creation,” she said, her finger lightly touching the hat. “It needed only to be woken by proximity to any of my other creations, and to be provided with—for lack of a better term—‘life force.’ _Energy._ I have more than enough, now, but I had to get back to you, Taylor…”

Her face twisted into a pained longing.

“How have you grown so much?” she asked, _begged._

I couldn’t tell what I was thinking, what I was _feeling_. None of this made sense, or if it did, none of it felt right.

Mom tore her gaze away as if it hurt to see me, and something inside me recoiled.

Her eyes found Sophia. She regarded her for a several seconds, her face a cold stare that she couldn’t quite hold; I could see the angry quivering at the corners of her eyes. Sophia stared back, unblinking.

“I’m sorry about your friend, Taylor,” Mom said in a quiet monotone.

Mom held out her hand. The red and green glow began to collect into a shape—a rough, rocky shape. _Coal._ She lifted it—

“What— Mom, what are you—”

This wasn’t how I remembered my Mom. She was an angel, always sweet and kind, ever since—

“She’s been naughty, Taylor,” Mom said. “She’s abused her power, you know. She’s— Oh, Taylor, I’m so sorry. What she did to you… She never would have been able if I’d been here… I’d have stopped her, I promise you, I would have.”

The world was collapsing, my head was being crushed, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t—how was this happening, it didn’t make any sense, how could she be alive, how could she be like _this_ —

“Mom, don’t— You can’t—“

“You better not pout, Taylor,” Mom said. “You better not cry… Don’t you remember, Taylor? Don’t you remember your favorite song?”

But—

“But it’s not,” I said. “It’s not my favorite…”

“I remember like it was yesterday,” Mom said. “You were so little…”

And then I realized: Santa had retired a decade ago. She’d retired when I was _five;_ she’d retired when I’d told her I didn’t like her song. Had her identity been wrapped within its notes? She’d switched songs, and she’d stopped being a villain—

“You have to stop,” I said, my voice shaking. “Mom, you have to stop all this. All these people, you’ve killed so many…”

My eyes drifted to glance over the side of the sleigh and down to the sea of elves below. So many…

“They were naughty—”

“Can you… can you undo it?”

“I only just got back to you, Taylor. Oh, Taylor—”

“Mom, what you’ve done…”

“They were _bad people_ Taylor,” Mom said. “It may not be kind, but it’s necessary.”

“I—” I began, but Sophia cut me off, breaking herself from her stupor.

“It’s not the Christmas spirit,” Sophia said, softly. Her fingers tightly gripped the scroll delineating naughty and nice.

Mom snorted.

“As if you would know.”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t,” Sophia said. “And I don’t. But your daughter might. _Kindness._ That’s Christmas, she said. Not _this_.”

Sophia tried to tear the scroll, but it refused to tear, so she settled for chucking it out of the sleigh.

Mom didn’t flinch.

“I made a list,” she said. “I checked it twice. I found out who was naughty and who was nice…”

I closed my eyes and tried to tune her out. I collected myself, and then, finally, began to sing…

“O Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining... It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth.”

“Taylor?” I heard Mom say, but I didn’t stop singing. From beside me I heard Sophia join in.

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ’til He appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…”

I could hear more voices join us, though I wasn’t sure whose; was it the elves below? Perhaps it didn’t matter.

“Fall on your knees! O hear the angel’s voices… O night divine, O night when Christ was born. O night divine, O night, O night divine!”

I opened my eyes even as I continued to sing. Mom’s face had softened; her cold smile had collapsed into a mournful longing. Her eyes fell down to the ground twenty feet below, then back up to where she’d first manifested, until finally…

“I don’t want to leave you,” I heard her whisper below the song. “Taylor…”

I smiled weakly as I cried, but I couldn’t stop singing if I tried; it was all that was holding me together.

“Taylor… your father… Give him my love?”

I nodded as best as I could.

Her hand reached out. I felt her fingers brush my cheek, and I wished they could remain there forever…

Too soon they abandoned me, and Mom began to float backwards. I saw her lips move, and though I could not hear her words, I knew what she had said:

_Goodbye, Taylor. I love you._

And finally, I managed to break away from the song’s hold, though Sophia and the crowd kept on singing.

“Bye, Mom… I love you, too,” I whispered. And though she could not have heard, her smile told me she’d understood.

“Truly He taught us to love one another; His law is love and His Gospel is Peace…”

The sky was lit once more by the beam of spiraling red and green light. It surrounded Mom, enveloped her, until she was lost within its shining light—

“His power and glory evermore proclaim!”

And then, with a brilliant flash of white light, she was gone.

“His power and glory evermore proclaim!”

The blinding light receded, giving way to dots of white light falling like snow.

As the shining snow reached the crowd below, the elves morphed back into the people they once had been, their green and red outfits replaced by their pants and shirts and everything else besides. And where the snow hit those who’d been taken by the fire-that-wasn’t-fire, their charred skin regained its former spectrum of colors, and their essences returned with little flashes of cheer.

How long did we sit there, hovering in the sky? I don’t know, but by the time I was ready to move, the crowd had dispersed. Below us, a few of the Protectorate stood in a circle waiting patiently for us to land, seemingly not in a mood to rush us.

“Taylor?” whispered Sophia, as the non-snow continued to fall around us.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” she said. “And I _am_ sorry. We never should have pushed you in that locker— Hell, we shouldn’t have done any of the things we did.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” I said.

I flicked the sleigh’s reins, and slowly we descended.

“And I’m sorry about your mom,” said Sophia. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like to see her again. Is there anything I can do?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t trust my words.

As we touched down, Sophia stepped off the sleigh. Miss Militia began to charge forward; Armsmaster of all people held her back.

Sophia’s hand glided over the sleigh’s side railing. She looked almost frail.

I wasn’t sure what counted as forgiveness, which was just as well, as I wasn’t sure I could forgive her. But still, I couldn’t just let her go. It wouldn’t be kind.

“Sophia?” I said.

She looked back at me. I couldn’t read her face, but I supposed it didn’t matter.

“Merry Christmas.”

**Author's Note:**

> If this story is good, thank you. If it is bad, my apologies. Either way, it was fun to write.
> 
> While I thought I was probably leaving a ton of clues to Santa’s identity to the point where it wouldn’t have been a spoiler, I still managed to refrain from calling the story “There’s No Way My Ressurrected Mom Can Be Endbringer Santa Claus.”
> 
> Merry Christmas!


End file.
